die, of Virginia, and Sharpe, of Maryland. On the 14th of April, 1755, the CONGRESS OF ALEXANDRIA opened in the stone mansion. At the court-house and market opposite, the colonists were making ready to shed their blood for the crown. Behind it the Potomac sparkled in the sun, and from the windows of their council-room the Governors could see, far over the shining waters, the hill-top now crowned by the Capitol. Commodore Keppel assist busy clerks and commissaries hurried; teamsters shouted; soldiers rejoiced in unlimited tobacco, and got drunk on superabundant West Indian rum, under pretense that the water of the town made them sick; Horatio Gates came to tender two New York companies; Richard Henry Lee led a county troop; Hugh Mercer, one of Royal Charlie's surgeons, with Fredericksburg volunteers; Andrew Lewis, from the wilderness, with a retinue of Indians and half-breeds; Benjamin Franklin, deputy postmaster, to give mail facili-ed at the Congress. Mr. Shirley was its ties to the army; Daniel Morgan, with his wagon, from Occoquan, eager to turn a penny as teamster; Gage, one of Braddock's lieutenant-colonels; and the fierce hussar Sir John Sinclair, who had frightened West Pennsylvania with his threats, and made a plan to blow up the falls of the Potomac that Braddock might have water transportation to the mountains all these and many more were there. Scarcely notable were these, for royal Governors came in state to hold conference with Braddock. These were Shirley, of Massachusetts, Delancey, of New York, Morris, of Pennsylvania, Dinwid Secretary. The Congress arranged with Braddock the plan of the campaign. It did more. In secret session, "in confidence not to be divulged," it resolved that, "having found it impracticable to obtain in their respective governments the proportion expected by his Majesty toward defraying the expenses of his service in North America, they were unanimously of the opinion that it should be proposed to his Majesty's ministers to find out some method to compel them to do it." This was the resolution of strangers in Alexandria in 1755; but when the policy became public, the Alexandrians met at the court-house, which faced the stone FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ALEXANDRIA. mansion, in July, 1774, with George Washington in the chair, and resolved: "That there is nothing to warrant the belief that the colonies will not contribute to the expenses of defending the empire. "That taxation and representation are in their nature inseparable." Braddock's stay in Alexandria did not increase loyalty. His troops nicknamed the Virginia rangers, in derision at the scanty coats which Dinwiddie had given them, "Bobtails;" but a ranger's rifle had not misspent an ounce of lead in five years, and there was not a musket in Braddock's army that would not have been ten times weighed down by the bullets it had wasted. The records of only one Alexandria courtmartial is left. It is short but ferocious: "Court-martial. Alexandria. Lieut. Col. Gage, President. The prisoner sentenced to one thousand lashes, but part of the pun On the 20th of April Braddock left Alexandria. On the 9th of July he fell. Washington filled the mountain passes with troops, and kept off the French and Indians from the town that trembled and grew. When the French power in Virginia was broken, he married, and "society" was chagrined at its early experiences of | his married life. Parson Weems tells us that "Alexandria, though small, was lovely, but had no charms for the palate. By tobacco its neighbors had made money. They then began to look down on the poorer sort, and to talk about families. Of course such great people could not run market carts. Hence the Belhavenites often sat down to a dinner of salt meat and johnny-cake. But when Washington brought the wealthy widow Custis to Mount Vernon, a market cart was constructed, and twice a week sent to Belhaven with fat things that amazed the lean market. Country gentlemen dining in town wondered at the change of fare, and thus it was discovered, to the mortification of some of the little great ones, that Colonel Washington ran a market cart." "Society" then, if proud, was often plain; for Washington writes in his him, and as the yeas and nays are not recorded, his votes will never be known. diary of a ball in Alexandria in 1760 | record-book shows no motion made by where pocket-handkerchiefs served as table-cloths, and bread and butter with tea, "which the drinkers could not distinguish from hot water sweetened," made the bill of fare, and in his disgust he writes it down "a bread-and-butter ball." Washington bought at a "town sale," in 1763, two corner lots on Pitt Streetone on Prince and the other on Cameron Street. He gave £30 for the former, and in 1790 was receiving $300 per annum ground-rent from it. Upon the latter he built his town office, where he transacted his business and met his friends. It was a town "annex" to Mount Vernon. When Dunmore was making his raids on the Potomac, Washington proposed building an addition, and removing the family He from Mount Vernon to Alexandria; but this was never done. The house stood until shortly before the late war. Washington until 1766 held no town office, but was often active in municipal concerns. He subscribed to the cost and supervised the putting down of the first public pump-an improvement on one that Braddock had brought. He suggested improvements in the market arrangements, and in 1765 insisted upon the modern way of selling grain by weight. fixed fifty-eight pounds to the bushel as the standard of wheat, and more than once demanded that all the weights and measures of the dealers should be tested by the standards brought from London in 1745, and which are still used as the market standards of the town. On the 16th of December, 1766, Colonel Washington became a member of the town council. The record reads: "The trustees proceeded to appoint a trustee in the Room of Geo. Johnson, deceased, and have unanimously chosen George Washington, Esq., trustee for the town aforesaid." The new trustee busied himself more with active operations outside the council than by legislative measures within it; for the The Washington's religion was of a kind. that did good to his neighbor. He was vestryman of the parish which included Alexandria, and saw Christ Church built in 1767-73, and worshipped there. Presbyterians soon followed the churchbuilding example, and in 1774 built a church on Fairfax Street near Wolfe. Washington contributed to the new church, occasionally attended its worship, and offered to educate his young cousin William Ramsay for the Presbyterian ministry. The Presbyterians at first held their services under a license from the county court, by which it was required 66 WASHINGTON SCHOOL. that during their meetings the doors should be kept unlocked, unbarred, and unbolted." The first Methodist church was a sail-loft on the river-side. From 1739 Belhaven had a school, and in 1759 a school-house was built by lottery in the market square. After the Revolution the school was removed to a new academy building near the corner of Washington and Wolfe streets. Washington added a free department "for the sons of widows" to the academy, and during his life paid £50 per annum to its support. In his will he made the foundation perpetual by this provision: "To the trustees of the Academy in the town of Alexandria I give in trust $4000, or, in other words, twenty of the shares which I hold in the Bank of Alexandria, toward the support of a free school." The academy was afterward transferred to a new schoolhouse on an adjoining lot, and is now the head of the city public - school system, under the title of the Washington School. Toward the close of 1767 occurred the most notable criminal trial that has ever taken place in the town. A number of negro slaves, becoming incensed against their overseers, poisoned them. Eight of the negroes were convicted, and early in 1768 they were hung in chains in the old fields, not far from where Christ Church now stands. The creaking of the gibbets and the rattle and clank of the chains as the bodies swung to and fro in the winter-night winds long lingered in the traditions of the town—a tale of horror that by the big wood fires of after-winters old gossips told to halffrightened lads crouched in the chimneycorners. After the bodies had hung some time they were decapitated; the heads were placed on long pikes, and attached built their nests within. The punish ment was noised abroad, and attracted newspaper mention in London. In 1774 the Friendship Fire Company, which still exists, was organized. It at first consisted of citizens who, out of "mutual friendship," agreed to carry to every fire two leathern buckets and one great bag of oznaburg or wider linnen." Washington was made an honorary member, and when he went as a delegate to the Congress of 1774, at Philadelphia, he examined the fire-engines in use there. On his return to Philadelphia to the Conti he dispatched this little engine to the Friendship Company. When in Alexandria during his younger days he always attended at fires, and assisted to extinguish them. In the last year of his life a fire occurred near the market. He was riding down King Street, followed by his servant, also on horseback, and he saw the Friendship engine poorly manned. Riding up to a group of well-dressed gentlemen near by, he called out: "Why are you idle there, gentlemen? It is your business to lead in these matters." And throwing the bridle of his horse to his |